Progress Report From Street Level: Little Has Changed

Jan 1, 2003 12:00 PM, Larry Anderson, Editor

If you want to know what's really going on, just ask someone at street level. In the case of our industry, that means just ask a security officer, which was the strategy behind some recent industry research.

A poll of security officers was taken nine months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Here are some of the findings:

• Four in 10 security officers say no new security procedures had been implemented at their buildings since the attacks.

• Seven in 10 security officers report that bomb-threat drills or natural disaster drills were never conducted at their buildings.

• One in five security officers received no training from their employer.

The overall gist of the poll results confirms our industry's worst fears: Not enough has changed since the Sept. 11 attacks. The polls were sponsored by Service Employees International Union, Washington, a union of security officers, and Kroll, a New York-based private security consulting firm.

Our nation's corporate citizens should be doing more than merely paying lip service to security issues. At street level, the difference between security based on corporate public relations and security based on real action becomes abundantly clear. Heightened security preparedness should be more than smoke and mirrors.

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Speaking of security officers, we are launching a new section in this month's magazine dedicated to guard services and management of in-house security staff. We think additional coverage of these “people” elements in our “On the Job” section (page 18) will nicely complement our usual focus on technology and applications.

The new department is just one of the changes you will notice in this month's issue — including a newly designed front cover, the addition of a full-blown table of contents (page 4) and other enhancements throughout the magazine. What hasn't changed is our core mission to provide the best, most up-to-date information to our readers about “using technology to protect people, facilities and assets.”

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This month in Access Control

• Targeting The Customer
• Electronic Pedigrees
• One Hero Among Many
• Who? What? When? Where? Why?
• More from September's issue